


The One With The Truth

by lapoesieestdanslarue



Category: Friends (TV)
Genre: Chandler is a baby who needs to be told it's okay to be himself ;-;, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-23
Updated: 2018-08-23
Packaged: 2019-07-01 11:37:49
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,883
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15773340
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lapoesieestdanslarue/pseuds/lapoesieestdanslarue
Summary: “You are a strong, confident woman... You do not need cigarettes...”The lady on the tape moans and drones on, but Chandler is awake and desperate for a smoke nonetheless. Remembering when he’d steal those smokes from the maid’s bag, and he’d take those drags in secrecy, and the nicotine would fill him, and he’d be able to trick himself simultaneously: that he was normal and that he liked women, and that he was normal and that he wanted to kiss Chris Goldman.





	The One With The Truth

**Author's Note:**

  * For [apolliades](https://archiveofourown.org/users/apolliades/gifts).



_“You are a strong, confident woman... You do not need cigarettes...”_

The lady on the tape moans and drones on, but Chandler is awake and desperate for a smoke nonetheless. His hand clenches the bedsheets, mind reeling through the years back to when he was nine, when his parents got divorced and he first learned that men could like men. When he first learned that men could kiss men, and it was okay, but it also _wasn’t_ because they were supposed to be a family, and he was supposed to have a mom and a dad just like everyone else. 

And when he’d steal those smokes from the maid’s bag, and he’d take those drags in secrecy, and the nicotine would fill him, and he’d be able to trick himself simultaneously: that he was normal and that he liked women, and that he was normal and that he wanted to kiss Chris Goldman. 

Cut to decades later, and he’s lying in bed, and he’s only ever had girlfriends, and he wants a smoke, and he wants to ignore the painful clench that ignites in his chest when it gets this late and he looks at the wall that divides him and Joey. 

He wishes, God he _wishes_ , hopes and prays that he could just be normal. Could just be comfortable in his skin, be as nonchalant as Joey when he casually admits that he bats for both teams, that he wouldn’t get all prickly when people assume he’s gay, that he hadn’t been so cruel to his father, that he wouldn’t be so cruel to himself, that he could just stop _lying._ But at this rate, he can’t, and he probably never will, and he’s made his bed, so now he’ll just have to suck it up and lie in it. 

It probably wouldn’t be so bad, he tries to tell himself. He could find women, a string of them, and then when it gets too much and too overwhelming he can drop them down the cavern of commitment that he won’t ever enter. Or maybe he will; maybe he’ll be able to a girl nice enough to marry, and have kids with. Great kids, kids that are funny and smart and he can just focus on them and then when they’re grown up, the wife and him can just get a divorce and be done with it all. He’ll even leave her the house. 

Chandler lets out a pained sigh. Throwing off the covers, he swings his legs over the bed and pads quietly into the kitchen, leaving the woman from the tape on repeat to an empty room. 

“Hey.”

Joey’s quiet greeting startles him in the four o’clock darkness. The other man’s eyes raise at Chandler’s colourful expletives, but he makes no move from the island chair. 

“Jesus, you scared me,” Chandler breathes. “What the hell are you doing up?”

Joey shakes the box of Cheerios beside him in answer. “Midnight snack. You?”

Chandler shuffles over, shoulders hunched from the weight of all his secrets. He wonders, absently, if anyone else hides just as much as he does. If anyone else is as much of an imposter as he is. He scrubs a hand over his eyes, collapsing in the chair. “Couldn’t sleep?”

“You still on this Janice thing?”

“It wasn’t a ‘thing’,” Chandler frowns. “We had to break up because she has a goddamn husband.” He doesn’t have the fire in him for any of his usual snipes or quips, but Joey doesn’t bat an eyelid; he knows Chandler well enough to recognise at his most honest, his truest, and take what he gets and be grateful to be trusted with such a fragile, delicate thing. They don’t ever acknowledge it, and never speak about it, but it’s there, between the two of them. A mutual trust, the likes of which is new and imposing to both. 

“You know, I get that it hurt you and stuff, but I can’t help but think that you were a little relieved, too.” Joey’s eyes peek up at him beneath the span of his dark lashes; the same eyes that begged him to break up with Janice, the same eyes that broke Chandler’s heart when he asked that of him. 

“Yeah, well, you know me and commitment.”

“I thought this was no bullshit hour.”

“That isn’t bullshit.”

Joey drops his spoon into the last dregs of cereal bowl and levels him with a thoroughly unimpressed look. _Close but no cigar._

“I just--” Chandler avoids his eyes, picking at the wood of the island unit. “I’ve never felt comfortable in my own skin, you know? And at the beginning, with a girl, it’s usually fine because I’m so wrapped up in her I can ignore it. But then after a while, it just… it grows, and it’s like I want to claw my face off, or something, and I can’t stand it, I just feel like such a liar because I don’t-- I don’t know what it is to love someone, or like them; and when I can break up with them, or be over with it, it’s like this breathing space. Just for a second. And then the feeling is back, and it’s this whole cycle.” He makes a shoddy gesture with his hand before scoffing at himself and dropping his head in his hands. 

“Chandler,” Joey’s voice is too gentle, too kind, he doesn’t know if he can take it. “You know what love is. You’re the most loving guy I know. You just haven’t found the right person.”

“Is that a joke? You hear the other guys, I’m just awkward and sarcastic and crass. I wouldn’t know love if it bit me in the ass.”

“Stop that,” Joey chides. “You do know love. You take Rachel out for lunch whenever you pass her office, and you save all those history articles for Ross. You’ve never missed one of Phoebe’s concerts, or my acting gigs, and you always try anything Monica makes. You’re the best one of us, I’m telling ya.”

“That’s not _love_ , though, Joe.”

“Not the same kind of love, sure, but still love. Still valid.”

Chandler drops his gaze to his hands. “Maybe I’m just not cut out for relationships.”

“Sure you are! But, you know, if you’re not having so much luck with the ladies, maybe you should try guys?” Joey asks gently.

“No, I can’t,” he shoots back without a second thought, the words out of his mouth before he can shove them back in as much as he desperately wants to. 

“Why not?” Chandler can see that Joey’s trying to mask his hurt, and it’s like a punch to the gut, because it was one thing saying those things about himself, but that damage was never meant to expand to Joey. 

Chandler is always honest at 4am, as honest as he’s learnt to be, but looking into Joe’s eyes he becomes his holiest, his most repentant. He makes his vow, here and now. This is his hill to die on, but at least the view is worth it. “Because if I do then I’ll be nothing,” he admits. “I spent my entire life avoiding that person and becoming the exact opposite of that person and if I give into it then… then I’ll be this stranger in my own skin, this person I’ve denied and it would _kill_ me, Joe.” There’s something wetting his cheeks, and he doesn’t register it as tears until Joe reaches out to wipe one from his eye, before swallowing him in a bear hug. 

“I’ve done such a horrible thing,” he whispers into the fabric of Joey’s sweater. “I’m a liar, Joe. I’ve hurt so many people.” He thinks of the slurs and the comments and the defences he flung at everyone who threatened the persona he’d made, he thinks of his dad, and the look of pure agony at what Chandler said to him. And all he wanted to say was that it was okay for Chandler to be whoever he truly was, and that was how Chandler repaid him.

“You ever think about your own hurt, first?” Joey asks quietly. 

Chandler pulls back, but Joey’s hands remain rested on his shoulders. “It’s nothing.”

“Chandler. It’s not your fault.”

He looks down, avoiding Joey’s heated gaze. “Yeah, I know.”

“I’m serious. It’s not your fault.”

“I know.”

“It’s not your fault.”

“What are you, stuck on repeat?” Chandler snaps, and immediately regrets it. But it doesn’t seem to faze Joey, because all he does is move his hands from Chandler’s shoulders to his face. Locking him in place, he tells him “It’s not your fault.”

“Don’t fuck with me Joe,” he whispers, relenting, eyes filling with fresh tears. “You know what I’ve done.”

“Would you hate me if I showed you how much I love you, despite all that stuff?”

“I could never hate you,” Chandler admits quietly. 

“Tell me if you want me to stop.” With that, Joey leans forward, and presses his lips against Chandlers’. It’s barely there, a ghosting, but it sends an electric shock throughout his whole body. 

Joey pulls back, his cheeks red and ears flushed, and the two men take a second. _Did this just ruin the friendship?_ The voice in Chandler’s head whispers. 

It’s answered by a smaller voice made bigger, a voice he ignored for so long he almost snuffed it out entirely. _I don’t care,_ it answers. With that barefaced admission, Chandler leans forward, and in a moment of pure, insane bravery that he didn’t know he had in him, kisses Joey back. 

They fit, like a jigsaw piece, like jumping into a bed after a long day, like coming home after being away for so long. It’s such a wonderful thing to love, he remembers. He’d forgotten that years and years ago, lost in the sea of desperation and fear and painful longing. Let it come, he says. Let the fear of being made new again threaten to break him down; he knows it won’t. It would be worth it, for this. For Joey, here beneath his hands in the most tangible and real way he’s ever felt with another human being. 

“If I took you back to my room now,” Joey pants against his lips. “Would you stay? You’re in real danger of breakin’ my heart, Bing.”

“I would,” Chandler promises fervently. “I’m. You make me want to be-- you make me _want._ I can’t promise that I’m going to come out tomorrow or that I’m not going to be an insecure mess, but I want to try, Joe. More than I’ve wanted anything ever. Just never let me go, okay? Don’t ever let me go.”

“Never,” Joey agrees.

With the sun dawning a new day, and Joey kissing him with a tenderness Chandler hadn’t known existed, it feels like the most honest thing Chandler has ever known. It marks a change, and it’s scary, but Joey is here, holding him, and that is worth every scary moment a thousand times over. He doesn’t know what the morning will bring, and this isn’t anything he’s ever navigated before, but he’ll get there. If it kills him, he’ll get there. 

That’s the first time Chandler was ever honest with himself. 


End file.
